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m Congress ) 
1st Session i 



SENATE 



\ Document 
1 No. 260 



NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE RAILROAD BUSINESS 

ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK CITY 

ON JANUARY 27, 1916 



By 



HON. WOODROW WILSON 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 



UL 




PRESENTED BY MR. CHILTON 
JANUARY 27, 1916.— Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1916 






D. of D. 
JUN 15 1916 



NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS. 



New York, January 87, 1916. 

Mr. Toastmasteb, Ladies, and Gentlemen : The exactions of my 
official duties have recently been so great that it has been very seldom 
indeed that I could give myself so great a pleasure as that which I 
am enjoying to-night. It is a great pleasure to come and be greeted 
in such generous fashion by men so thoughtful as yourselves and so 
deeply engaged in some of .the most important undertakings of the 
Nation, and I consider it a privilege to be permitted to lay before you 
some of the things to which we ought to give our most careful and 
deliberate consideration. 

The question, it seems to me. which most demands clarification just 
now is the question to which }^our toastmaster has referred, the ques- 
tion of preparation for national defense. I say that it stands in need 
of clarification because it has been deeply clouded by passion and 
prejudice. It is very singular that a question the elements of which 
are so simple and so obvious should have been so beclouded by the 
discussion of men of high motive, men of purpose as handsome as 
any of us may claim and yet apparently incapable of divesting them- 
selves of that sort of provincialism which consists in thinking the 
contents of their own mind to be the contents of the mind of the 
world. For, gentlemen, while America is a very great Nation, while 
America contains every element of fine force and accomplishment, 
America does not constitute the major part of the world. We live 
in a world which we did not make, which we can not alter, which we 
can not think into a different condition from that which actually 
exists. It would be a hopeless piece of provincialism to suppose that 
because we think differently from the rest of the world we are at lib- 
erty to assume that the rest of the world will permit us to enjoy that 
thought without disturbance. 

It is a surprising circumstance, also, that men should allow parti- 
san feeling or personal ambition to creep into the discussion of this 
fundamental thing. How can Americans differ about the safety of 
America? 1, for my part, am ambitious that America should do a 
greater and more difficult thing than the great nations on the other 
side of the water have done. In all the belligerent countries men 
without distinction of party have drawn together to accomplish a 
successful prosecution of the war. Is it not a more difficult and a 
more desirable thing that all Americans should put partisan pre- 
possessions aside and draw together for the successful prosecution 
of peace? I covet that distinction for America; and I believe that 
America is going to enjoy that distinction. Only the other day the 
leader of the Republican minority in the House of Representatives 
delivered a speech which showed that he was ready and, I take it for 

3 



4 NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS. 

granted, that the men behind him were ready, to forget party lines 
in order that all men may act with a common mind and impulse 
for the service of the country ; and I want upon this first public- 
occasion to pay my tribute of respect and obligation to him. 

I find it very hard indeed to approach this subject without very 
deep emotion, gentlemen, because when we speak of America and the 
things that are to be conserved in her, does it not call a wonderful 
picture into your mind? America is young still; she is not yet even 
in the heydey of her development and power. Think of the great 
treasures of youth and energy and ideal purpose still to be drawn 
from the deep sources from which this Nation has always drawn its 
life. Think of the service which those forces can and must render to 
the rest of the world. Think of the position into which America 
has been drawn, almost in spite of herself, by the circumstances of 
the present day. She alone is free to help find things wherever they 
show themselves in the world. She will be forced also, whether 
she will or not, in the decades immediately ahead of us, to furnish 
the world with its chief economic guidance and assistance. 

It is very fine to remember what ideals will be back of that assist- 
ance. Economic assistance in itself is not necessarily handsome. It 
is a legitimate thing to make money, but it is not an ideal thing to 
make money. Money brings with it poAver which may be well or ill 
employed, and it should be the pride of America always to employ 
her money to the highest purpose. Yet if we are drawn into the 
maelstrom that now surges across the water, swirls alike in the west- 
ern and eastern regions of the world, we shall not be permitted to 
keep a free hand to do the high things that we intend to do. It is 
necessary, therefore, that we should examine ourselves and see 
whether we can make certain that the tasks imposed upon us will be 
performed, well performed, and performed without interruption. 

America has been reluctant to match her wits with the rest of the 
world. When I face a body of men like this it is almost incredible 
to remember that only yesterday they were afraid to put their wits 
into free competition ' with the world^. The best brains in the world 
afraid to match brains with the rest of the world. We have pre- 
ferred to be provincial. We have preferred to stand behind pro- 
tecting devices. And now, whether we will or no, we are thrust out 
to do on a scale never dreamed of by recent generations in America 
the business of the world. We can not any longer be a provincial 
Nation. 

Let no man dare to say, if he would speak the truth, that the ques- 
tion of preparation for national defense is a question of war or of 
peace. If there is one passion more deep-seated in the hearts of our 
fellow countrymen than another, it is the passion for peace. No 
nation in the world ever more instinctively turned away from the 
thought of war than this Nation to which we belong. Partly be- 
cause in the plenitude of its power, in the unrestricted area of its 
opportunities, it has found nothing to covet in the possession and 
power of other nations. There is no spirit of aggrandizement in 
America. There is no desire on the part of any thoughtful and con- 
scientious American man to take one foot of territory from any other 
nation in the world. I myself share to the bottom of my heart that 
profound love for peace. * I have sought to maintain peace against 
very great and sometimes very unfair odds. I have had many a 



NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS. 

time to use every power that was in me to prevent such a catastrophe 
as war coming upon this country. It is not permissible for any man 
to say that anxiety for the defense of the Nation has in it the least 
tinge of desire for a power that can be used to bring on war. 

But. gentlemen, there is something that the American people love 
better than they love peace. They love the principles upon which 
their political life is founded. They are ready at any time to fight 
for the vindication of their character and of their honor. They will 
not at any time seek the contest, but they will at no time cravenly 
avoid it; because if there is one thing that the individual ought to 
fight for. and that the Nation ought to fight for. it is the integrity of 
its own convictions. We can not surrender our convictions. I would 
rather surrender territory than surrender those ideals which are the 
staff of life of the soul itself. 

And because we hold certain ideals we have thought that it was 
right that we should hold them for others as well as for ourselves. 
America has more than once given evidence of the generosity and 
disinterestedness of its love of liberty. Tt has been willing to fight 
for the liberty of others as well as for its own liberty. The world 
sneered when we set out upon the liberation of Cuba, but the w r orld 
sneers no longer. The world now knows, what it was then loath to 
believe, that a nation can sacrifice its own interests and its own 
blood for the sake of the liberty and happiness of another people. 
Whether by one process or another, we have made ourselves in some 
sort the champions of free government and national sovereignty in 
both continents of this hemisphere; so that there are certain obliga- 
tions which every American knows that we have undertaken. 

The first and primary obligation is the maintenance of the integ- 
rity of our own sovereignty. That goes as of course. There is also 
the maintenance of our liberty to develop our political institutions 
without hindrance; and, last of all. there is the determination and 
the obligation to stand as the strong brother of all those in this 
hemisphere who mean to maintain the same principles and follow the 
same ideals of liberty. 

May I venture to insert here a parenthesis? Have any of you 
thought of this? We have slowly, very slowly indeed, begun to 
w T in the confidence of the other States of the American hemisphere. 
If we should go into Mexico, do you not know what would happen? 
All the sympthies of the rest of America would look across the 
water and not northward to the great Republic which we profess to 
represent; and do you not see the consequences that would ensue in 
every international relation? Have gentlemen who have rushed 
down to Washington to insist that we should go into Mexico re- 
flected upon the politics of the world? Nobody seriously supposes, 
gentlemen, that the United States needs to fear an invasion of its 
own territory. What America has to fear, if she has anything to 
fear, are indirect, round-about, flank movements upon her regnant 
position in the Western Hemisphere. Are we going to open those 
gates, or are we going to close them ? For they are the gates to the 
hearts of our American friends to the south ck us and not gates to 
the ports merely. Win their spirits and you have won the only sort 
of leadership and the only sort of safety that America covets. We 
must all of us think from this time out in terms of the world, and 



6 NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS. 

must learn what it is that America has set out to maintain as a stand- 
ard bearer for all those who love liberty and justice and righteous- 
ness in political action. 

But, gentlemen, we must find means to do this thing which are 
suitable to the time and suitable to our own ideals. Suitable to the 
time — does anybody understand the time? Perhaps when you 
learned, as I dare say you did learn beforehand, that I was expecting 
to address you on the subject of preparedness, you recalled the ad- 
dress which I made to Congress something more than a year ago. in 
which I said that this question of military preparedness was not a 
pressing question. But more than a year has gone by since then and 
I would be ashamed if I had not learned something in 14 months. 
The minute I stop changing my mind with the change of all the 
circumstances of the world, I will be a back number. 

There is another thing about which I have changed my mind. A 
year ago I was not in favor of a tariff board, and I will tell you why. 
Then the only purpose of a tariff board was to keep alive an un- 
profitable controversy. If you set up any board of inquiry whose 
purpose it is to keep business disturbed and to make it always an 
open question what you are going to do about the public policy of 
the Government, I am opposed to it : and the very men who were 
dinning it into our ears that what business wanted was to.be let 
alone were, many of them, men who were insisting that we should 
stir up a controversy which meant that we could not let business 
alone. There is a great deal more opinion vocal in this world than is 
consistent with logic. But the circumstances of the present time are 
these : There is going on in the world under our eyes an economic 
revolution. Xo man understands that revolution; no man has the 
elements of it clearly in his mind. Xo part of the business of legis- 
lation with regard to international trade can be undertaken until we 
do understand it; and Members of Congress are too busy, their duties 
are too multifarious and distracting to make it possible within a 
sufficiently short space of time for them to master the change that is 
coming. 

I hear a great many things predicted about the end of the war; 
but I do not know what is going to happen at the end of the war; 
and neither do you. There are two diametrically opposed views as 
to immigration. Some men tell us that at least a million men are 
going to leave the country and others tell us that many millions are 
going to rush into it. Neither party knows what they are talking 
about, and I am one of those prudent individuals who would really 
like to know the facts before he forms an opinion; not out of wisdom 
but out of prudence. I have lived long enough to know that if T do 
not. the facts will get away with me. I have come to have a great 
and wholesome respect for (lie facts. I have had to yield to them 
sometimes before I saw them coming and that has led me to keep a 
weather eye open in order that T may see them coming. There is so 
much to understand that we have not the data to comprehend that T 
for one would not dare, so far as my advice is concerned, to leave 
the Government without the adequate means of inquiry — but that is 
another parenthesis. 

What I am trying to impress upon you now is that the circum- 
stances of the world to-day are not what they Were yesterday, or 
ever were in any of our yesterdays. And it is not certain what they 



NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS. 7 

will be to-morrow. T can not tell you what the international rela- 
tions of this country will be to-morrow, and I use the word literally: 
and I would not dare keep silent and let the country suppose that to- 
morrow was certain to be as bright as to-day. America will never be 
the aggressor. America will always seek to the last point at which 
her honor is involved to avoid the things which disturb the peace of 
the world; but America does not control the circumstances of the 
world, and we must be sure that we are faithful servants of those 
things which we love, and are ready to defend them against every 
contingency that may affect or impair them. 

And, as I w T as saying a moment ago, we must seek the means which 
are consistent with the principles of our lives. It goes without say- 
ing, though apparently it is necessary to say it to some excited per- 
sons, that one thing that this country never will endure is a system 
that can be called militarism. But militarism consists in this, gen- 
tlemen: It consists in preparing a great machine whose only use is 
for war and giving it no use upon which to expend itself. Men who 
are in charge of edged tools and bidden to prepare them for exact 
and scientific use grow very impatient if they are not permitted to 
use them, and I do not believe that the creation of such an instru- 
ment is an insurance of peace. I believe that it involves the danger 
of all the impulses that skillful persons have to use the things that 
they know how T to use. 

But we do not have to do that. America is always going to use 
her Army in two ways. She is going to use it for the purposes of 
peace, and she is going to use it as a nucleus for expansion into those 
things which she does believe in, namely, the preparation of her citi- 
zens to take care of themselves. There are two sides to the question 
of preparation: there is not merely the military side, there is the 
industrial side: and the ideal which I have in mind is this: We 
ought to have in this country a great system of industrial and vo- 
cational education under Federal guidance and with Federal aid, 
in which a very large percentage of the youth of this country will 
be given training in the skillful use and application of the principles 
of science in manufacture and business: and it will be perfectly 
feasible and highly desirable to add to that and combine with it such 
a training in the mechanism and care and use of arms, in the sani- 
tation of camps, in the simpler forms of maneuver aud organization, 
as will make these same men at one and the same time industrially 
efficient and immediately serviceable for national defense. The point 
about such a system will be that its emphasis will lie on the indus- 
trial and civil side of life, and that, like all the rest of America, the 
use of force will only be in the background and as the last resort. 
Men will think first of their families and their daily work, of their 
service in the economic ranks of the country, of their efficiency as 
artisans, and only last of all of their serviceability to the Nation as 
soldiers and men at arms. That is the ideal of America. 

But, gentlemen, you can not create such a system overnight: you 
can not create such a system rapidly. It has got to be built up, and I 
hope it will be built up, by slow and effective stages; and there is 
much to be done in the meantime. We must see to it that a sufficient 
body of citizens is given the kind of training which will make them 
efficient now if called into the field in case of necessity. It is dis- 
creditable to this country, uentlemen. for this is a country full of 



5 NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS. 

intelligent men, that we should have exhibited to the world the 
example we have sometimes exhibited to it, of stupid and brutal 
waste of force. Think of asking men who can be easily trained to 
come into the field, crude, ignorant, inexperienced, and merely fur- 
nishing the stuff for camp fever and the bullets of the enemy. The 
sanitary experience of our Army in the Spanish-American War was 
merely an indictment of America's indifference to the manifest les- 
sons of experience in the matter of ordinary, careful preparation. 
We have got the men to waste, but God forbid that Ave should waste 
them. Men who go as efficient instruments of national honor into 
the field afford a very handsome spectacle indeed. Men who go 
in crude and ignorant boys only indict those in authority for stupid- 
ity and neglect. So it seems to me that it is our manifest dut,y to 
have a proper citizen reserve. 

I am not forgetting our National Guard. I have had the privi- 
lege of being governor of one of our great States, and there I was 
brought into association with what I am glad to believe is one of the 
most efficient portions of the National Guard of the Nation. I 
learned to admire the men, to respect the officers, and to believe in 
the National Guard ; and I believe that it is the duty of Congress to do 
very much more for the National Guard than it has ever done here- 
tofore. I believe that that great arm of our national defense should 
be built up and encouraged to the utmost; but, you know, gentlemen, 
that under the Constitution of the United States the National Guard 
is under the direction of more than twoscore States; that it is not 
permitted to the National Government directly to have a voice in its 
development and organization; and that only upon occasion of 
actual invasion has the President of the United States the right to 
ask those men to leave their respective States. I, for my part, am 
afraid, though some gentlemen differ with me, that there is no way 
in which that force can be made a direct resource as a national re- 
serve under national authority. 

What we need is a body of men trained in association with units of 
the Army, a body of men organized under the immediate direction of 
the national authority, a body of men subject to the immediate call to 
arms of the national authority, and yet men not put into the ranks of 
the Regular Army; men left to their tasks of civil life, men supplied 
with equipment and training, but not drawn away from the peaceful 
pursuits which have made America great and must keep her great. 
I am not a partisan of any one plan. I have had too much experience 
to think that it is right to say that the plan that I propose is the 
only plan that will work, because I have a shrewd suspicion that there 
may be other plans that will work. What I am after, and what every 
American ought to insist upon, is a body of at least half a million 
trained citizens who will serve under conditions of danger as an 
immediately available national reserve. 

I am not saying anything about the Navy to-night, because for some 
reason there is not the same controversy about the Navy that there is 
about the Army- The Navy is obvious and easily understood; the 
Army apparently is very difficult to comprehend and understand. 
We have a traditional prejudice against armies which makes us stop 
thinking calmly the minute we begin talking about them. We sup- 
pose that all armies are alike and that there can not be an American 
Army system, that it must be a European system, and that is what I 



RATIONAL PKEPAEEDNESS. ( J 

for one am trying to divest my own mind of. The Navy is so obvious 
an instrument of national defense that I believe that, with differ- 
ence of opinion about the detail, it is not going to be difficult to 
carry out a proper and reasonable program for the increase of the 
Navy. 

But that is another story; my theme to-night is national defense 
on land where we seem most negligent of it. And I do not want to 
leave in your minds the impression that I have any anxiety as to the 
outcome, for I have not the slightest. There is only one way for 
parties and individuals to win the confidence of this Nation and that 
is by doing the things that ought to be done. Nobody is going to be 
deceived. Speeches are not going to win elections. The facts are 
going to speak for themselves and speak louder than anybody who 
controverts them. No political party, no group of men. can afford 
to disappoint America. This is a year of political accounting, and 
the Americans in politics are rather expert accountants. They know 
what the books contain and they are not going to be deceived about 
them. No man is going to hide behind any excuse; the goods must 
be delivered or the confidence will not be enjoyed. For my part, 
I hope that every man in public life will get what is coming to him. 

If this is true, gentlemen, it is because of things that lie much 
deeper than laughter, much deeper than cheers ; lie down at the very 
roots of our life. America refuses to be deceived about the things 
that most concern her national honor and national safety, that lie 
at the foundation of everything that you love. It is the solemn time 
when men must examine not only their purposes but their hearts. 
Men must purge themselves of individual ambition, and must see 
to it that they are ready for the utmost self-sacrifice in the interests 
of the common welfare. Let no man dare play the marplot. Let 
no man dare bring partisan passion into these great things. Let 
men honestly debate the facts and courageously act upon them. 
Then there will come that day when the world will say, " This 
America that we thought was full of a multitude of contrary counsels 
now speaks with the great volume of the heart's accord, and that 
great heart of Ajnerica has behind it the supreme moral force of 
righteousness and hope and the liberty of mankind." 

o 



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